Dr. Alex Cross and his wife each pursue an equally monstrous serial predator. In this corner, the D.C. Metro Police Department, where Cross still serves as a consultant, brings him in to throw light on the murders committed by the Family Man, who breaks into upscale homes and shoots everyone inside: grandparents, parents, children. In this corner, Bree Stone, who's moved from D.C. Metro to the Bluestone Group, is tasked with keeping everything hush-hush while she investigates a series of explosive charges against fashion queen Frances Duchaine, whom multiple litigants have accused of saddling them with insurmountable debts for plastic surgery she and her close associate Paula Watkins insisted they'd need to make it as models, then forcing them into sexual slavery when they couldn't repay them. As Bree worms her way into ever darker allegations about Duchaine, the Family Man continues his open season on picture-perfect households. Then editor Suzanne Liu, who's just been dumped by star true-crime author Thomas Tull, comes to Cross with an incredible story: Tull, whose pitch for a new book on the Family Man earned an eight-figure contract in a closed auction, has actually been killing all those people himself. As usual, Patterson throws everything against the wall to see what sticks until the two cases, either of them complicated enough to sustain an entire volume, eventually collide in a way that's surprising but ultimately unsatisfying, and his triple cross falls flat. Just the thing for readers who think their own work lives are high-stress drudgery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A killer slaughtering multigenerational families wholesale in and around Washington, DC, looks to be seeking out Det. Alex Cross's family next. Cross is on the case, of course, with his efforts doubled by a flashy true-crime author. With a 500,000-copy first printing.